Special Announcement: Changes to posting schedule & subscription tiers

Hello again — squeezing this announcement in between last Friday's post and this one. As Salt for the Eclipse has now passed one year of meditations, I've made some considerations about what to do here in the coming year, and I wanted to share those choices in a separate post from what I consider "the real work."

This should be only a few minutes' read, so please give it a look whether you're a paid or free subscriber; there are updates here for both groups.

Posting schedule changes

The simplest but most important change I'm planning to make for the future is the number of posts I write for only paid readers to see. I doubt anyone's been keeping track, but so far I've been writing three pay-locked posts per season (working by astronomical seasons, i.e. those divided by solstices and equinoxes). This works out to about one locked post per month, although I don't schedule them in strictly that fashion; I've just tried not to have two locked posts in a row.

Going forward, I'm going to see about doing four locked posts per season instead of three. I still want the majority of posts to be free for a couple of reasons:

• The main advice I've read for subscription newsletters is to leave the locked stuff at well less than half of your total posts. It's supposed to help new readers see so many posts that they don't feel like they pretty much have to subscribe, as that feeling could make them resentful. I don't know if this strategy actually works, but since I'm trying to conduct things here in a not-completely-counterproductive way, I'm holding to that logic for now.
• As stated repeatedly, I'm very uncomfortable asking people to directly pay for my opinions or knowledge about things, and I still don't consider myself enough of an expert on anything to have the audacity to charge readers something amounting to a consulting fee. I am not looking to be paid for my thoughts here so much as I'm looking to be paid for the time I spend committing those thoughts to text. Therefore I'd rather people subscribe because they'd like to financially support me, not just because they need to do so to unlock access to any one post.

These considerations aside, however, I do need to start accounting better for how my weekly posts take me hours to write — usually at least five, sometimes closer to eight — and I'm still not actually making money off of them. I'm getting away with it because my day job is slow, especially on most Fridays, and I'm paid a fixed salary (albeit a barely-liveable one) so I don't lose wages just from the slowness. But writing this does cut into time I could be spending on writing that's supposed to be submitted for paid publication under my professional identity, so I'm still stealing from myself in that regard. And if I eventually wind up with a day job that pays me better but also makes me much busier, then Salt for the Eclipse will have to end or post much less frequently — unless it can partially supplant other paid work. Lastly, until I get that better-paying job, I'm just not well-off enough to justify spending 5-8 hours a week on anything without some support from other people.

So I have to balance various priorities here. For the moment, I'm hoping locking slightly more posts will help serve as some kind of incentive for more paid subscriptions, without turning this project into a walled fortress for monetary loyalists.

If you've only read a few posts here, feel free to ignore everything I've just said; I'm sure you're probably still figuring out if this newsletter has anything of real value for you in the first place. But if you've been a "heavy duty" free reader — either reading most of the posts here or subscribing for at least six months — or if you've been a previously paying reader whose payments have lapsed, please give serious consideration to upgrading or re-upgrading. I only need five new conversions (what a wretched word) to at least stop losing money here.

Subscription tier changes

As usual, if not quite that many free readers decide to start paying, it would also be possible for me to stop losing money and even start making a bit if at least one paid reader wanted to upgrade their subscription tier.

I think this is probably a harder thing to convince anyone to do, so I've been especially reluctant to nudge people about this. There's a big difference between paying only $1/month — which isn't even the price of a coffee, closer to the tip for the barista — versus paying $5/month. The latter isn't much different than some monthly subscriptions for entire newspapers or magazines, and Salt for the Eclipse is a one-person operation sending out far less material that I can't possibly expect anyone to find just as worth their investment as a larger publication. Of course, it would be incredibly heartening if so, but I don't want to count on it. Never mind going from $5 to $20.

But hypothetically, it would be noticeably helpful if I received greater patronage from even just a handful of people. Right now none of the higher subscription tiers have been chosen by anyone; so I'd like to both remind paid readers that higher tiers exist, and to mention some improvements to each. Besides the Supporter tier that every paid reader is currently at, which allows them to read all currently pay-locked posts, here are the other options, with changes highlighted:

Occult ($5/month, $50/year)

• Occult posts are made visible at this tier. I haven't gotten to write an Occult-tier post yet, but my intention has been for such posts to go into knottier, artsier, weirder territory than what I usually put here, aiming intentionally for a grey area between essay and literature. Maybe you'd like to be the first person who gives me reason to write an Occult post, and the first person to get to read it.
• Submit questions for a seasonal Q&A post. You can e-mail questions to me at thehunterskiss@gmail.com from the e-mail you subscribed with, and I'll answer questions in batches for January, April, July, and October. Since you can already comment on existing posts, seasonal Q&A questions don't have to be about anything I've already written. Feel free to ask what I think about something I've never discussed. It can even be quite unrelated to what normally goes in Salt for the Eclipse. Even if it's not a question I feel comfortable answering directly, I will still give you some kind of reply. I want to especially emphasize this benefit for readers who don't know me personally and therefore have no other way to stay in touch.
• New benefit: Monthly music mailing. Music is a very important part of my life and my seasonal observances. Near the end of each month, separate from Friday posts, I'd like to send out an Occult-tier post with embedded links to 3-5 songs I associate with that time of year. Sometimes the connections will be obvious, and other times I will leave the associations up to you. Hopefully you'll find some indirect inspiration for your own rites, and I'll be paying it forward to musical artists I admire: please buy their music if you like it.

Alchemist ($20/month, $200/year)

• Same benefits as lower tiers. Speaks for itself.
• Request special posts on a topic of your choice (subject to my discretion), read them within the month. You can make requests to thehunterskiss@gmail.com from the e-mail you subscribed from. I've still never been able to do one of these, but once I can, these will also be posted separately from the usual Friday material. They may be shorter as a result, but it will depend on how much the topic interests me and what I have to work with. I will publish these posts for all paid readers to see, but credit you (under whatever name you prefer) as the reader who asked.
• New benefit: Seasonal anti-horoscopes. This is a huge experiment, if it comes to pass. As discussed elsewhere, I'm skeptical of using planetary positions to predict mundane terrestrial events, even though I find natal charts to be compelling psychological tools. I also do not personally choose to charge for divinations, anyway. However, if you find impersonal astrology services frustrating and opaque, or you want to toy with constellational storytelling minus the vague directives, at this tier you can e-mail me your date of birth (and location, if comfortable, for your rising sign). After privately e-mailing you a natal chart with a few personal interpretations I will also send you private reflections in March, June, September, and December, which I'm going to call anti-horoscopes. These will not predict anything, and will not rely on current planetary positions, but will instead give you meditative questions for the coming months based on star positions, seasonal changes, and what I know of the points on your natal chart that we both agree have powerful symbolic value. The questions are for you to work out on your own, and you never need to tell me the answers. I have no idea how this will turn out, because I only came up with it today, but I'm very curious to see if it's a) engaging for anyone else, and b) ideally, useful.

If any of these things interest you, then to change your subscription tier, you can click the account management links at either the top right or bottom right at the main newsletter page.

Gratitude, again

I absolutely abhor the kinds of manipulative capitalist verbal gymnastics that get used in posts like this, so I hope I managed to write this in a basic, straightforward way. I will also promise that just as I don't put pleas for paid subscriptions into every post that I write, you're not going to see posts like this very often — only if I actually change something again.

Thank you for following along, and I look forward to seeing whether any of these gambles pay off. I'll be back to my usual posting schedule on Friday.